Hello! It's been a while. I've had a rough half-year but am doing all right now.

I've opened an account on alternative site Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~krissnow

Over there you can find my latest story, "In With the Tide", and another that I'll post soon. See you there, I hope! You can also find me on X/Twitter (@KrisSchnee), if that interests you.

I plan to focus on Weasyl for story-posting in the future. I've grown uncomfortable with FA's strange policies, particularly its permanent advertising of racial and sexual causes that don't belong at an art site.

As for my current projects: I've been focused on, and just finished, a rough draft of a "Rising World 3" novel. I'm putting the draft aside to ferment (though it smells already) and trying something else: a weird story about magical girls. I also have around 20K words of a VR-related novel sitting around and I'm considering coming back to that, and I still want to do some other "Thousand Tales" thing or other near-future fiction. Finally, I've been doing some solo RPG things that might be interesting to relate. We'll see what I can get done this year!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B29CYLX

On sale for 99 cents this weekend! This one is about a young man escaping from a social credit system thanks to a game, its meddlesome AI, and learning to be his own man. Has a direct sequel in "Crafter's Heart", and it's part of the much larger "Thousand Tales" setting.

I just finished a draft of "Shaper of Isles" and am putting that aside for the moment so I can come back for revision a bit later. The draft ran for about 81K words.

I'm not sure what's next for me. I'm thinking about the Thousand Tales setting again and in contrast, a disturbing cyberpunk-like setting idea. That one's based on the idea of today's widespread propaganda/censorship and other problems, versus people who rebel with farming, fitness, faith, and... AI? If I worked again in the Tales setting itself I'd still want to jump forward a decade or so, carrying on with the growth of a culture that has digital paradise but wants to grow and expand rather than retreating completely inward. (Thinking partly in terms of, "I want to read the Thousand Tales book that doesn't exist yet.")

I have about 20K words written of "Nox Vesta", a LitRPG novel, and around 3K words of "Rising World 3" which I should probably do this year, yet. Lately I've fooled around with a few more solo RPG story/game experiments but they're probably not suitable for commercial sale. (My Lunar Exalted PC is currently rescuing people from a burning mansion in a rebellious city built around a magitech desalination plant.) I also have a space adventure story sitting around at about 13K words but don't feel ready to commit to that one.

It would be nice to do another short story or two. I have two of these out to magazines but they've each had several rejections and one magazine is explicitly closed to members of my race. If those get rejected further I'll probably put them online publicly since they can't sell. But it could be good to do either some basic transformation stuff or general fantasy/SF again without turning it into a book.

Finally, I want to revisit my AI and game design ideas again.

I got a little carried away with my solo RPG campaigns. One of them ran for about 50,000 words, and I'm now over 25K words into writing that up as a novel. I've begun posting that to Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5942610 ) and plan to begin posting it to Royal Road soon.

The title is "Shaper of Isles" and it's inspired by "Godbound" and the NES game "StarTropics" along with some historical things. The hero is an Earthman dropped into a world of tropical islands, caught between primitive tradition and a chief who wants "progress" at any cost. He gains great magical power and helps lead the islanders to fix their problems. Can he do that in a way that satisfies everyone and preserves what they value about their own culture? Features kemono-style otter people (human+ears/tail/webbing), some transformation, a little of the "tech expert invents stuff" idea from "Rising World", and a lot of stone-shaping magic.

What I'm thinking of for cover art is one of the following:
-Ottery lady (not full anthro) on a tropical beach, doing magical dance (swirly water magic?)
-Hovering stone cube with islands and ruins on the visible faces
-A flag stuck in a beach as if to claim it, displaying a triangular image of a swirly Wind/Water/Stone cycle

I drew a mockup of option 2 to say "I know this is ugly; I would show this to an artist as an idea of what I want", and got the reaction "wow that is ugly". I don't yet have an artist lined up to hire, so if you're interested, let me know! This is fantasy but not cartoony.

I've been relatively slow at writing over the last two months since the release of "Wavebound Crusade". Currently about 13K words into a new LitRPG book but am otherwise unsure what to work on. I also did a few short stories sitting in an awkward Patreon backlog, and I have a new story commission to try. Did this one short story about a dark fantasy where people have had their souls devoured so that their loyalty to some strange cause is now their #1 defining identity.

One project has been several attempts to play an RPG as a single player, with note-taking along with the cards/dice. (That's how "Wavebound" began.) One such attempt took me through two books of the Pathfinder "Iron Gods" campaign and derailed its plot in a fun way. Being able to evade some of the obvious "kill everything in the way and move on" gameplay is fun. I did several games in original settings and am a bit stumped there. One is now about 4000 words of actual story text with hardly any rules notation. One is interesting but a mess of odd plot threads. The experience is fun but I keep thinking "I should be writing, or at least playing this in a way that's clearly easy to convert to a story".

I got to run two sessions of the RPG "Godbound" recently and enjoyed that. Having a martial-focused character in that game means that even an evil sorcerer isn't much of a threat, which forces adventure design that isn't about careful tactical map movement. I've been pushed to to GMing or playing these things exclusively online, since my local gamer community basically wants to play only D&D and never explore anything else. Online play can also be annoying given things like, "We're using a dice-rolling bot that literally displays some kind of political message every time you roll dice" -- I'll likely be told I can't play if I don't show my allegiance by using it.

What else to say... There's an audio edition of "The Rising World Company" now.

Haven't posted much lately because I was heavily involved with writing "Wavebound Crusade", book 7 of the series. I just tonight finished the rough draft of that. Started it in early November right after "The Rising World Company", and it turned out just over 100K words. Going to put it aside for a bit before editing. On Patreon it's gotten awkward because I'm way behind in posting it but don't want to spam people with like 50,000 words in a month.

I'm not sure what I'm doing next. Might finish a simple transformation story that's been sitting around, and a short piece inspired by being cursed out. Besides that I'm interested in some other short story TBD, and still wanting to do more game design based on the "Ethos" project.

Where have I been? Focused on getting a novel out the door.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLG7PVM8
My book "The Rising World Company" is out! This is a sequel to "Rising World", the story of a modern engineering student who's sent to a fantasy world and becomes an inventor. He uses magic crystals for steampunk engines, and researches airships and machine tools along with spells.

This sequel let Vonn go on some longer trips and begin having a larger influence, along with picking up from last book's cliffhanger. It was humbling to notice at the end that I'd used the word "just" over 300 times and most could be cut easily! Had some fun trying to work a "Wavebound" cameo into there. Something challenging during the revision was how to add some more action to the final chapters.

You can also find the optional side-story "The Purpose of Wings" at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X6K7T7F/ .

What's next? I haven't done short stories in a while. I began poking at a "Wavebound" book 7 but would like to try something short before getting heavily into that. Something in the Tales world, maybe?

One other thing I've been wanting to try is the tabletop RPG "Godbound", maybe running a few sessions of that. Haven't got players though.

Two of my books are free through Monday! They're from the "Thousand Tales" science fiction series, about liberty, AI, and games. Readable in any order.
Fairwind's Fortune: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079KZVZKS
2041: Root Access: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Z9VFMFS

"Fairwind's Fortune" involves a woman suddenly offered freedom from all responsibility, who isn't sure what to do with it or what will make her truly happy. (See also "Crafter's Passion" for how her story touched the life of a young man living under the Social Credit System.)
"Root Access" is a story of creative freedom, and people who can't stand the thought of anyone having a dissenting opinion.

Looking back on the series, I want to draw a clearer distinction between two meanings of "transhumanism". I meant, "wouldn't it be cool if we had AI companions and seasteading and the option to become immortal cyborg furries". Those in power mean something far worse. As written, the books do talk about how tech doesn't fix everything; how characters turn to AI worship because they're coming from broken homes and a society without role models or religion; and how even the people literally made of technology instinctively form families and societies and myths to guide them.

It's meant to be an upbeat, physically possible future. I want to revisit the setting in some way, probably jumping forward a few years. I'm not sure how, yet, and I'm concerned that any honest portrayal of the future might need to involve more intense censorship and other social problems than I portrayed so far. Yet I want to stay optimistic!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BHLL49H
On sale this weekend: "The Dream of Aveire", my novel of starfarers who terraform worlds for art.
I'm proud of this one for having competing factions desperate to preserve what they consider important, while being tempted with valuable things at a price. They do shocking things without being evil, for reasons important to them.

It was inspired by this image, done partly by  cobaltowl -- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26825854/

I'm having to rethink my "transhumanist" fiction like this, in light of how the concept is becoming linked to high-tech tyranny. Even so, these characters do have a conflict between central planning and freedom, safety and the chance to explore, and questions of when advanced technology makes people better off.

I'm interested in writing a few little stories on the theme of tax troubles. Did the paperwork require you to change species? Did you inherit a mansion in another universe? Are you hunting down a mad scientist for tax evasion?

These would be commissions, 500-1000 words, at a rate of $5-10. Any specific things you want to see in a short format? They can be in any setting I'm familiar enough with, and involve transformation things or not. If interested, comment/note with a length and idea!

Thinking about some kind of little story commission project about taxes. Transformation caused by a tax error? Get sent to another world for tax reasons? Receive a magical inheritance and then have to go to the fantasy realm to fill out the paperwork for it? Tax bills as part of that "Hearth and Hall" game, or within "Thousand Tales"?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X6K7T7F/

This one's a side story to "Rising World". A modern chemistry student has been sent to a world of magic, to live the life of a bird-girl from a family of messengers. As usual, you can read a free preview on Amazon. I'm also posting an earlier draft of this one on Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/5.....pose-of-wings/

What else? As anybody on my Patreon site can see, I've been dividing my work between three projects:
-Rising World sequel (14K words). Resolves that cliffhanger; still figuring out where it goes from there.
-The Stars Beneath Me, the story of a teleporting space merchant (12K words). Space treasure map leads to a long-lost sector, with customers eager for visitors.
-Worldwide Weave, the story of an ambitious gamer in the Thousand Tales world in the first months of 2041 (4.7K words). In the aftermath of late 2040's events a high schooler in the USA creates his own fantasy world.
...Not counting a two-part loony April crossover between Rising World and Thousand Tales and Skyrim.

You won't see "Rising World" up on furry reading lists for 2021, let alone award nominations, but I expect that.

Here's a new short story collection in the world of Thousand Tales, my ongoing science fiction world!
https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Tal...../dp/B09RDQD3R8

This set includes a lot of oddball corners of the setting. Meet the costume-maker who loaned major character Linda an otter suit; the AI catgirl who told off the Game-obsessed Ramon in "Freelance Minion"; the programmer who worked on a surveillance system before moving on to a nicer AI; and a man wronged by trickster Sunset before he rewrote his brain.
This one isn't the best starting point for new readers; try "Virtual Horizon", though you can jump in at almost any other volume.

I kept coming up with more ideas for this one. Even so, there was material left on the cutting room floor, from a tragically stalled humor story to ideas that just didn't have a good plot.

The plan is to finish a stalled commission, attempt a short one, maybe take one more if I can find a good enough idea, and then focus on a space story (6K words available on Patreon) and on a "Rising World" sequel.

Oh, and an audiobook version of "Virtual Horizon" is finally up on Amazon/Audible.

I'd been reading a series of articles dissecting "Pathfinder" campaigns, summarizing the important parts or even ripping apart the sequential plotline to turn the whole thing into an open-world adventure loosely based on the original plot. See eg. https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2019.....skull-and.html .

It's an interesting exercise. Some of the most interesting RPG material I've seen works by sprinkling a few key plot points around on a map and letting the players connect the dots about what they ought to do, instead of being told that "In book 2 of this campaign you will meet X ally who gives you the Y artifact." With that said, here's my attempt at describing an implied plotline from "Exalted". 2nd edition, book "The South".

1: There's a city-state called the Lap, known for great farming and being built on/around a mountain-sized statue of a seated monk. It's considered a boring, peaceful place.
2: It's ruled by King Noonecares. All power is held by the distant Scarlet Empire, which installed three competent but bickering "satraps" to run it. One of these wants to backstab the others and the Empire and become an independent queen, and will consider an alliance with anybody who might help.
3: The Empire is collapsing due to major problems of its own but really doesn't want to give up this breadbasket. The current garrison is weak and run by General Wrongway, a smart but inept commander whose underlings have orders to shiv him if he starts giving dumb orders in a crisis again.
4: The giant statue is an ancient magitech weather controller. It's widely known that it passively keeps the natural hot weather pleasant. But it also has other powers. An operator can scan a huge area for magical blights and anomalies, reshape magic leylines, and change the weather including even deadly storms and volcanic eruptions. It's a magic WMD with nobody currently at the helm.
5: Several powerful secret organizations know about the statue's full powers but don't know how to activate it. They've had the place staked out for centuries with spies who don't know about each other. They each want to control the thing or at least make sure nobody else does.
6: How do you take control of the statue? Get a team of Dragon-Bloods (elemental heroes) to poke the statue's various chakra points and then have a Solar (sun hero) poke it in the forehead to unlock the skull-based control room. Then you need a Solar to sit in the big chair, and have some way to undo the powerful lock that's deactivated all but the scanner function. This is tough to pull off partly because Solars are considered demonic villains in the world's dominant religion. There's also some important bureaucratic regalia in the control room, including a magic stamp that addresses letters straight to heaven with "no fooling, take this straight to upper management" labels.
7: The Lap has a hidden pro-Solar cult that thinks they're benevolent heroes. (This is closer to the truth.) If Solars openly started a rebellion these guys would join it. They don't know they're bankrolled by one of the spy organizations, one of the two factions of Siderials (kung-fu astrologer Illuminati), who have offices in heaven.
8: Wandering around in this area is Crazyblaze, old beggar. He does fun little fire magic tricks if you're nice to him, and less pleasant tricks if you're mean. Nobody's sure who the old coot is but he shows occasional signs of having been very educated before losing his mind. He gives out souvenir magic trinkets that, completely unknown to him, burst into flame and cause unexplained fires whenever someone makes him angry enough. Someone connecting the fires to him might realize he used to be much more powerful.
9: Centuries ago there was a mystic noodle dragon named Swan who fought evil fairies from beyond reality, and is missing, presumed dead. Fairies like to break people's minds and then let them go so everyone can point and laugh. He was a skilled, honest administrator in the heavenly bureaucracy and everybody liked him. There's a group of fire elementals called the Court of the Orderly Flame that tries to run magic/spirit affairs in this region in the same style Swan would have liked.
10: Swan's dragon-bureaucrat replacement is named Wong. After diplomatic snubs where heaven kept failing to give him the right titles and salary, he became a wildly crooked blackmailer that everybody hates except heaven, which keeps forwarding complaint letters to "Swan's office".
11: A couple of powerful magic users are wandering around looking for clues that Swan might not really be dead. One of these is an Orderly Flame woman descended from Swan and a mortal, and one is a Siderial.
12: One of the crooked gods in this region is Ahlat, brutal god of cattle and war, who hates the way the Lap religion/government worships him only as the happy cow god. He has a bunch of battle-nun followers in a neighboring country and wants to spread his influence.

So with just a collection of facts like this, you could put together an open-ended adventure where the heroes encounter these various things, with a fairly obvious goal and a way to reach it. Facts 11-12 aren't even necessary; they're a few of a larger set of add-in plot threads that give a party more ways to influence the situation. You could easily throw in a lost temple, as many spy rings as you want to include, the mundane civilian problems of the local peasants, or some wandering monsters. Just having the outline of a big prize/threat and various people who have some connection to it is the seed of a big plotline that doesn't railroad the players. It could also be spun in different directions based on player interest, featuring large-scale war, a few assassinations, a diplomatic approach, a magic-heavy solution, or even the party ignoring most of it and using the region as background for another storyline.

I'm trying an experiment: a story on Amazon's "Kindle Vella" system. You can read the first parts of my story "Mobius Accord" here for free, with more to come.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MT9BYHN/

This one's about an electrical engineer who starts playing a strange game that's a front for a quantum computing and cryptocurrency operation. Her character is a fox anthro experimenting with engineering and enchanting. Can she upgrade her personal AI while carving out a place for herself in the game?

I wrote this a while back and haven't finished it yet, so I'm editing it and putting up what I've got to see how it does. That's the nice thing about the serial format.

If you start using this Vella system, you might also be interested in the space adventure "Horizon: Salvaged Heroes" by Joel Kreissman:

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella.....ory/B09878P7WV

---

For those curious about Vella itself:
It's weird, man. They're trying to re-introduce the idea of serial novels. Those have a good tradition that includes the works of Dickens and Twain. So far the system only lets you read via a Web browser or iOS app, and only in a narrow column format. From the author perspective it's convoluted: "You get paid half the value of tokens that readers spend. Unlocking an episode costs (complete 100 words) tokens and tokens cost $2 for 200 so, like, a penny per 100 words, except you can buy more at a time for a lower unit price. And each user gets 200 tokens free so you don't get paid for those. Except we *will* pay you for those through the end of 2021. Also you have to give away your first 3 chapters. And you get a Reflex save to take half damage."
At least it's not as obscure as how the pay structure works for their audiobooks.

Four of my books are on sale all weekend! These include:

https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Sol-Ga.....dp/B07RC2H492/ -- Tower of Sol: Post-apocalypse, a band of anti-AI survivors get lured into a tower of adventure.
https://www.amazon.com/Striking-Cha.....dp/B07NBTSY44/ -- Striking Chains: A peasant learns magic and gets recruited for his evil empire's order of masked enforcers. Same world as "Striking the Root" and "Striking Flags".
https://www.amazon.com/Fateweavers-.....dp/B07FCV3573/ -- Fateweaver's Quest: A man is pulled into a living RPG on an alien planet, but his fellow space crew feel they've become NPCs to support his heroism. Uses the actual tabletop RPG "Fate", whose designers I don't support or endorse.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BHLL49H -- The Dream of Aveire: A high-biotech utopian starship turns star systems into gardens as a hobby. This one is going to be tricky. Featuring cool art by  cobaltowl!

I'm thinking about what I've done so far in this setting. (If you don't already know about it, see "Virtual Horizon" on Amazon, or the free story collection "Thousand Tales: Extra Lives".)

I wrote...
-"Rags to riches", in Stan's mini-series. There's a similar plot for Ramon in "Freelance Minion" and for Gail in "Fairwind's Fortune".
-"Person uploads and hangs around in the game world having miscellaneous adventures". That's "Queen of Nowhere" and "Learning To Fly".
-"Person uploads and then spends a lot of time doing things in the real world to be useful in between gaming adventures". That's "Virtual Horizon", "Liberation Game", "Reconnection".
-The POV of an AI trying to understand the real world and reach into it to help out.
-The POV of a new uploader going "wow this is weird", and getting used to the new environment.
-The POV of people who don't upload or avoid it as long as possible. This setup tends to make the game not matter, since winning at it has no real effect.
-A bunch of miscellaneous short stories exploring various corners of the setting.

What have I not done already with the setting?
-POV: One of the cyborged animals. I said they exist so I'm locked into having them in the setting, but don't know how practical they are. Are they 90% AI or 50% or what? I have the option of downplaying them but would have to justify that in terms of them just not having an advantage over pure AIs or being way too expensive for anybody to make more. If they're important then I don't know what to do with them.
-"A player (uploader or not) focuses entirely on game events and feels they're important without regard to reality." I have trouble coming up with a story that's 100% in game without it being importantly linked to the real world. This setting is set up as hard SF, so it can't do plots where "OMG my brain has been magically zapped into the game by accident and now I have to slay the Demon Lord to escape!" Or, "Whoever takes the seven Thunderthigh Crystals will control the Internet!" Also, the setting portrays freedom as valuable and endangered, and some readers don't want to read about that. I once had a remarkable critique where the reader got hung up on the idea of Paul riding a broken-down bus. "It's the future, so there should be teleporters!"
-"A non-player does stuff in this setting that has little or nothing to do with the game". There is other stuff going on in the setting and it can be only tangentially linked to Team Ludo.
-Aftermath of other stories. For instance, we don't see anything about Horizon, Stan or Linda talking with their families. "Hey, you know how your kid uploaded? I'm a second copy of her living undercover." Nor do we see the space plot. I'm not sure where that one goes beyond "we're on an asteroid now and not sure if this is a suicide mission where our minds are just stuck here till the hardware breaks".
-Jumping forward 5-10 years. This has been my rough goal, allowing me to start a new official series with a new name so people don't feel hopelessly behind, and giving me space to handwave how we got to the current day. I have no idea of the specific plot or hero.

What might I want to write about farther into the setting's timeline?
-Colonization of Mars, led by AI/uploaders. Tension between paving the way for live humans, and "why bother"; attempts to become self-sufficient vs. being dependent on a host country that wants to maintain control.
-Life for people living through a transhuman economic revolution. Can their freedom remain relevant or are they fated to be serfs relying on charity?
-Development of a large-scale AI dominated nation including the virtual part and real sovereign territory. Does Silver Circle get acknowledged as a real country? Does it trigger revolution elsewhere? What happens in the AFS where they're sympathetic but wary of the Game, and what about the US where the Game is suppressed?

Finally, I'm not sure what would sell. What tends to be popular in the genre is the above kind of story where someone's magically trapped in the game and in real danger there, or is an emotionally broken person who spends all possible waking time in a VR harness. Generally there's some critical in-game event that must be dealt with to avoid global disaster. The Tales setting isn't really set up for that. I think people also want to read about a human rather than a native AI.

My novel "Rising World" is now available! You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09H5CQSX5
It's a fantasy story in which a modern student is sent to another world where he becomes a magic-using engineer... also a fox. Features slice-of-life style, dungeon exploration, divinely imposed game rules, and friendship.

Been reading the novel "Perchance To Dream" by  fgm01 , here:
https://supertaster.itch.io/perchance-to-dream

Interesting so far. I like being shown a magic system that gets me imagining how I'd want to use it!

(Oh, and "Rising World"'s rough draft is done and the cover art is in draft status.)

I am in need of some book cover art for my story "Rising World". Main character is a steampunk anthro fox gadgeteer with magic, in a vaguely colonial American fantasy setting.

The book is meant for the "LitRPG" audience; see typical cover art on Amazon under that term. I'm thinking of showing the fox either with a simple BG suggesting his river village home, or a blacksmith forge/inventor workshop, or simply a set of steam pipes. Needs to not look too cartoonish or people will say "this is for a Young-Adult audience". And I'm going for something on the cheap end; don't need super detailed fur texture or the like.

I need the legal right to use this for a commercial book cover. An 1875x2850 image with room at the top/bottom for "Rising World"/"Kris Schnee". (I can do the text myself.)

I hired an artist to work on this starting months ago and it's still in the rough sketch stage with no willingness to commit to a deadline. So I'm looking for alternatives.

I've started posting a new fantasy novel to the site "Royal Road"! It's about a modern college student who's sent to a fantasy world to take over for someone else. His new home is on the verge of a steampunk magitech revolution, and he's set to be at the forefront of it. In between exploring dungeons and gaining skills and levels, since it's a world running on game logic. What do the gods want from him, and can he grow both as a person and as an adventurer?
You can find the story in progress, here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/4.....2/rising-world
And I'm posting advance material to Patreon, because I've started using that: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=5942610 . I'm considering doing a 6th book of "Wavebound" if enough people are interested in that one. (Book 3 of it is being posted to Royal Road as well, under the name "Wavebound".)

I'm at a crossroads between major projects, and to sure what to focus on. I would like to write a book that can find commercial success, and that probably means writing something enjoyable for the LitRPG market specifically. It needs to be something that interests me, too.

-Mobius Accord. This project exists as around 17K words of a draft. New setting. It involves a game where people earn a cryptocurrency by farming the game world. The heroine is a young woman playing as a kitsune engineer, and her goal is to upgrade her personal AI but she has no particular goal beyond that. I have good cover art already. I'm tempted to say the heroine is pulled into the game world by a soft-science version of uploading, because readers seem to prefer either that or someone climbing into a VR pod and not really getting out for the duration of the story.
What's holding it back? A clearer idea of whether to do uploading or what.

-Thousand Tales: Untitled Story. No text written yet. Hero is someone who was just uploaded. He was middle-class, probably a farmer (I seem to write a lot of farmer protags) who was badly injured and has good insurance. He quickly gets caught up in a newly established fantasy zone where there are specific, strict game rules, much more specific than Thousand Tales canon so far. In this fantasy realm he becomes important. I haven't yet figured out what he actually does! In a setting where nobody is uploaded unwillingly and the game itself is sanely run without perma-death, what motivates someone staying within the game world? Simply the bragging rights of helping to establish a virtual kingdom?
What's holding it back? Deciding on the hero's goal. A big part of the setting is the interaction between the real and virtual worlds, and it seems readers want to focus near-exclusively on the game.

-Dark Lord Isekai: Humorous fantasy about a guy who's been magically sent to replace a standard evil overlord. He wants to lose to the local heroes if he can convince them not to kill him, but has to do that without getting backstabbed by his evil lieutenants. I have some specific character ideas and rough location ideas so far. It's not game themed specifically, and I don't think it'd benefit from that. I have already licensed an image that would make good cover art.

The marketing is important here. I will likely try releasing the book on the site "Royal Road" (where by the way I've released books 1 and 2 of "Wavebound" under that name), to build hype on the theory that it'll lead to sales when it's complete.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086BBLJL9 -- "Virtual Horizon" is 99 cents this weekend! It's about a game world that offers digital immortality under the rule of a supposedly-friendly AI. Features transformation, griffins, and fantasy adventure.

I'm trying to focus on marketing this weekend. I need to hit a point where people know the books exist, so that whenever there's a site where people look for recommendations or compile a list of books that exist, somebody other than me mentions mine.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TTT7T49/
New release: Book 5 of the "Wavebound" series about a merchant who became the new Goddess of Water. Features robots, gator-men, ruins, war and surreal divine battle.

Book 1 is now free on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08CBJGVCT

I'm beginning to post books 1-2 to Royal Road as an experiment to see if that draws reader attention to the series. You can read that as an ongoing story here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/39279/wavebound

Seek out alternative communications platforms ASAP.